This book offers the most lucid overview available of Sigmund Freud, his legacy, and his place in our world. As the person responsible for the birth of psychoanalysis and one of the sharpest clinical minds of the 20th century, Freud continues to be one of the most influential thinkers of our time and one of the most controversial. For those interested in understanding the life and work of this seminal figure as well as the current debates that surround him, this book will prove an invaluable guide.

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Very good study aid helped me with the "evaluate Freuds psychosexual theory" question. Good to know what he said. Even if he is a little out of date with some stuff. Still Marmite either you like or not.

I am studying Psychoanaylsis in University and was advised by my lecture to get this book as it is easy to read and includes all the vital points to what Freud talks about. My lecture is right and woud recommand this book to any Psychoanalysis student.

Freud’s original writings are quite difficult, particularly for the average person such as myself, and lend themselves instead more to the student of psychology. It is for this reason that books like David Stafford-Clark’s What Freud Really Said appear, for they provide distillations of original works in a more user-friendly language so people, without having to refer to the originals, can get a handle of what’s going on and being said by distinguished writers such as Sigmund Freud.

However, David Stafford-Clark’s work, I would say is not the best introduction to Freud’s work. For one, it was first written over 50 years ago (in 1965) and since then much more research and evidence has been done on psychoanalysis; and secondly, David Stafford-Clark’s language seems also dated in terms of overall presentation and phraseology. There is also a lack of coverage in the book; when, for example, you turn to the case studies of Freud (Little Hans, Dora, The Rat Man), this is about all you get, save for a brief mention towards the end on The Wolf Man. David Stafford-Clark points out that there are eleven main case histories but doesn’t cover them in this book.

An alternative account is Ruth Snowden’s work on Freud which I found much more accessible than Stafford-Clark provides, even though I would have liked Snowden’s book to cover more of the case histories that occupied Freud. However, Snowden does, in a separate work, cover the works of Carl Jung, which makes a good companion volume to her work on Freud, as both psychologists go hand-in-hand and add to one’s overall understanding of these fascinating theories first put forward almost a century ago.

What Freud Really Said is a fairly slim volume that lacks detail and could be written in a more modern, understandable prose style for today’s audience.